


And Oh, He Would Fall Again

by mystivy



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: M/M, Post-Avengers, Pseudo-Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-06
Updated: 2012-06-06
Packaged: 2017-11-07 01:58:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/425656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mystivy/pseuds/mystivy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a certain smell of iron before a storm that Loki once loved; a smell he knew not only in the air of Asgard just before the weather broke, but also in the hidden places of his brother’s body, in his mouth and the tender skin at the inside of his elbow and at the top of his thigh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Oh, He Would Fall Again

There was a certain smell of iron before a storm that Loki once loved; a smell he knew not only in the air of Asgard just before the weather broke, but also in the hidden places of his brother’s body, in his mouth and the tender skin at the inside of his elbow and at the top of his thigh. He had spent hours, weeks, years over the centuries cataloguing the tastes and scents and sensations of the Thunder God, he had whispered his name into his golden skin. He wondered, during the battle, if Thor ever thought of it now. And then he saw, when he drove the blade into his side and Thor fell in front of him, that sometimes he did. His brother was never one to hide his sentiment.

Now Thor walked in front of him, his sunlit divinity at one with the golden hues of the Realm Eternal. Loki felt like a ragged thing beside him, gagged and in chains, led to the Great Hall like the stray he was. When he fell—oh, when he fell—he was fuelled with the righteous anger of the lonely and he burned with the fury of stars. But now in this hall, that used to be home, the golden sunlight seemed to mock him and it wore his tired eyes red.

Thor glanced back at him as he led him towards the throne. “Father,” he called, and his voice filled the echoing space the way only a future king’s could. “I found him.”

Odin was silent, Gungnir in hand, watching his sons as they reached the foot of the dais. Then he stood, slowly, and came sombrely towards them. Loki felt ages pass as he watched Odin descend the steps. Finally, he was so close that Loki could hear his heavy, tired breath. He looked exhausted again, far too soon, and Loki knew it would not be long before Thor wore a crown.

“My son,” said Odin, and Loki could have laughed at the words but for the gag. “What madness is this?” There was an ancient sadness in his voice that Loki recognised; it was the sadness that loosened his fingers as he hung from the Bifrost, the sadness before the fall. “Thor, let him answer.”

Thor turned towards him and slid his hand around the back of Loki’s neck. He held him there, for a moment, and Loki saw the gravity in his eyes. Then he touched a key to the catch and the gag fell from Loki’s mouth. His jaw ached, all of a sudden, and with his manacled hands he rubbed hard circles against his bones. His mouth was dry and his tongue, for all its quickness, felt like lead.

“Such destruction you wrought on Midgard,” continued his father. “So much death. Have you forgotten that once we went to war with Jötunheim for the sake of that world?”

When Loki tried to laugh, it came out as nothing but a strangled breath. “I have not forgotten, Allfather,” he said. “Do you think I would forget the war that brought me here?”

Odin frowned. “No, Loki,” he said, and Loki saw a glimmer of curiosity in his single eye. “Perhaps you remember all too well.”

“And what is a fitting punishment for the deaths of mortals?” asked Loki, carrying on as if merely musing, as if nothing hung in the balance.

Odin half-smiled a pitying smile. “There is time enough for that, my boy,” he said, and he turned to Thor, placing a weighty, tired hand on his shoulder. “Thank you for returning your brother to us,” he said. “Now take him to his chambers.”

“Ha!” said Loki, his voice still rasping though he was truly amused. “Am I to be punished like a child? Shall I think on what I have done, Father?” He gave the word a vicious twist.

Odin was silent as he turned and walked away.

 

His chambers were just as he left them. Loki strode inside while Thor hovered near the doorway, until Loki turned to him and held up his hands, still in chains. “Am I to remain bound?” he asked.

Thor entered, closing the heavy door behind him, and came slowly into the room. He had the key that Tony Stark had used to fasten the chains, chains that could hold Loki bound even through the realms. Thor took the key and set him free.

And suddenly, he wanted Thor to be gone. “You can leave me now,” he said, keeping his voice icy, though he felt the need to be alone like something desperate rising inside him.

Thor just smiled. “If you think I am going to leave you, then you have forgotten me in the time you have been away, brother,” he said. He placed Mjolnir gently on a tabletop beside a small pile of Loki’s books. Loki’s chamber was full of books and old tablets, rune-inscribed parchments rolled up beside gathered inkbottles. The feathered pens with which he wrote were ragged now, their nibs encrusted with dry, flaking ink.

“You think I will run?” asked Loki.

“I think there are many paths out of Asgard,” replied Thor. “And you know them all.”

“So you will stay to guard me, is that right?” His chambers were vast, as befitted a prince of Asgard, but Thor was capable of filling every room he entered. There was nowhere for him to hide here, and even if there was, Thor would follow him.

“Look at you, brother,” said Thor, gently. He took Loki by the hand and led him to the bathing chamber. The room was largely taken up with an ever-flowing hot spring bath, but on one wall there hung a pearlescent mirror, shimmering with colours similar to those of the Bifrost. Thor stood behind him and took his shoulders. Loki hated it, hated being manhandled, he did, and yet he did not shake those hands loose. “Look,” said Thor again, and Loki did.

He stood like a sickly birch sapling against a centuries-old beech. He was thin and pale, his skin a blue that was not Jötun, it was simply the translucence of ill health. His eyes were sunk deep in dark sockets and his hair hung limp around his face. Even in his glorious armour, Loki of Asgard looked like a shadow.

“You are not well,” said Thor, gently. He began to remove Loki’s armour with great care, which Loki found irritating and annoying and so, so endearing, after everything, and he felt that he could hardly stand it. And yet he did. First Thor removed the outer layers, the leather and gold, until he stood in his green tunic and smallclothes. Thor peeled off the tunic but left him his modesty as he guided Loki towards the bath. “Here, brother,” he said, bringing Loki to the steps and watching him enter the water.

And indeed it was bliss. How Loki had missed this, out in the void of space, on the bare rocks of the Chitauri and during his brief sojourn on Midgard. How he had hated it at first, the indignity of such an impoverished survival, until he had taught himself to hate the memories themselves, the lying luxury of an Asgard where he was never a true son. But now, as he sank into the hot spring water, it was as if he sank into a past that seemed so long ago, though it was nothing in the span of his centuries.

And then there was Thor. Loki had heard the gentle fall of his cape and his attempts to be quiet as he removed his breastplate and boots, as he stripped to his own smallclothes. He seemed hesitant, at the edge of the water, so Loki looked up to beckon him in. But the sight of his brother’s body stopped him.

“You hardly fare much better than me,” he said. Thor was mottled with bruises from the battle. There was a particularly dark purple over his lower ribs, and his chest and back bore the marks of prolonged fighting. And there, in his side, was the angry red wound that Loki had made. Thor saw him staring at it and covered it with his hand. “Had things gone differently today,” said Loki quietly, “I might now be proud of that.”

Thor uncovered it again and stilled. “It is shallow,” he said. “It is but a scratch.”

“Come into the water, Thor,” said Loki, and Thor did.

And somehow they fell back to their old ways, with Thor lying against the golden side of the bath, his arms wrapped around Loki, who lay back against him, between his legs. It was absurd, after such a war. And yet it was not, it was the most natural thing in the world. Thor ran his hands through Loki’s hair, soothing and calming him, humming a vague tune as he held him.

“Are you becoming warm, brother?” asked Thor, after a time.

Loki chuckled. “I am a Frost Giant, Thor,” he said. “I am always warm in Asgard.”

He felt Thor’s arms tighten around him, felt his thumbs circling against his skin. “Good,” was all he said. 

“And you? How do you fare?” Loki tried to sound complacent, but his fingers found the wound in his brother’s side. Thor inhaled a sharp breath when he touched it. 

“I am fine,” he said, but Loki could see through the bravado. He sat up and turned to look.

“Here,” he said. “Let me.” And though he was exhausted, and he was not a healer, this was not beyond his seiðr. He felt the spark of it run through him, the current that sang through the water and through the air, that he called from Yggdrasil itself, and with this power he knitted together his brother’s flesh. Thor watched as he drew his hand away, then examined his side himself. “I left you a scar,” said Loki. “I know how you value your battlescars.”

Thor looked up at him with a weary smile. “This is one battle I would happily forget,” he said.

“Even though you defeated me, dear brother?” said Loki, teasing and twisting but, almost to his own surprise, not unkind.

“I never wanted to fight you,” said Thor. “Loki,” he said, sighing, as if he wanted to say more. His hand had found its way to the back of Loki’s neck, holding him there, not tightly, but fondly. He pressed their foreheads together and closed his eyes. And as Loki leaned forward to kiss his brother, he knew what Thor had intended to say.

It was gentle at first, but just for a moment; soon Thor’s hands slid down his back and pulled him tight against his body. Their mouths opened to each other and Loki revelled in the rediscovery of tastes and sensations that, just earlier this day, he had thought lost to him forever. He knew now why Thor’s heat had always been so enthralling to him, but that did not change his longing, the longing he had convinced himself he had forgotten.

“Come,” said Thor, drawing back and already breathless. He stood and led Loki out of the water. They were both dripping still when he peeled off Loki’s smallclothes and his own and pushed Loki against the wall, kissing him again, devouring him. Thor was not born a Thunder God, but Loki knew why he had become one. He was powerful and fearful and majestic, and it was with almost delirious relief that Loki felt himself held within his arms once more. Thor was already hard against him, and tired as he was, Loki felt himself rise. Thor turned him towards the wall and pressed kisses against his shoulders, and then turned him back and pressed more to his chest and neck and jaw. “I have missed you so,” he said in a breath, finding Loki’s mouth again.

Loki’s hands roamed freely over Thor’s body, over the curves and planes, over his strength and gentleness. He listened for the tiny sounds of pleasure as he kissed under Thor’s jaw, as he spread his fingers down his arms and felt them surrounding him. He pushed sinuously against him simply to feel his skin. He took Thor’s hand to his mouth and, on each fingertip, tasted the iron of storms. When Thor brought him into the bedroom, he laid Loki on the bed like a fragile thing. Loki wanted to protest, but he did not; he knew that sometimes it was Thor and not he who could see the truth of things. He lay on sheets that smelled of summer and felt his brother’s lips and tongue and beard against his skin, kissing the dip of his navel, the plane of his stomach, the length of his cock, before he swiped his tongue along the underside and Loki gasped as his hips rose from the bed.

But Thor did not stay long there before he slid back up Loki’s body. “Turn over," he whispered, and Loki groaned and did so. Again Thor pressed kisses to his skin, and Loki let them sink in, sink deep, as Thor made his way across the plains of his back and the dip of his spine. Soon he felt Thor’s rough beard against the rise of his ass and he whimpered, hard now against the sheets, pushing up to find his brother. Thor laughed quietly and then found him, that intimate place that Thor always found with his tongue and his fingers, and Loki twisted his fists in the sheets and spread his thighs apart and Thor kept working him long after he was ready.

And then finally, finally, Thor sank deep inside him, his mouth pressed to Loki’s shoulder and his arms strong on either side. He took it slowly, pressing himself against Loki’s back and murmuring against him words of reassurance, of home, of love. Thor was always so willing with his words, so generous. Loki let himself bask in it, let himself be held and fucked and loved.

“Ohh, I missed this,” said Thor, his voice little more than a growl. He thrust in once more, a little harder.

“Again,” gasped Loki. “Please, again.” And Thor obliged, the heat rising between them as he drove in deep, Loki rising to meet him every time. It felt to him as if the vast universe had shrunk down, suddenly, and all his plans, his unseen schemes, were designed to bring him to this moment, this exhausted, perfect moment. This fall, when it came, was desperate and long but nothing like the last; it was warm and full and Loki embraced it, embraced the mindless pleasure deep in his bones, in his pulsing cock and clenching muscles, and this time—oh, this time—with a wrenching cry, Thor fell with him.

Thor collapsed upon him, and Loki loved the weight, the bulk of him, pressing him down into the mattress. He turned to face him, and Thor was smiling sleepily. They lay catching their breaths for some time, silent, Thor’s thigh still slung across the back of Loki’s legs and his hand rubbing endless, lazy circles against his back.

Then, “Wait here, brother,” said Thor, and he was gone, vanished into the bathing room, and he returned with a cloth. He sat on the bed and, with great care, he turned Loki over and washed him, his large hands brown and gentle against Loki’s pale skin.

“I will not break, Thor,” said Loki.

Again Thor laughed a little. He ran the back of his fingers against Loki’s cheek, his thumb against his lower lip. “I know,” he said. “You may have estranged yourself from me of late, but you are no stranger to me. I know your strength, and sometimes I even know your mind.”

“You flatter yourself,” said Loki, perhaps a little more harshly than he had meant to. It was softened, though, by the way his fingers entwined themselves with Thor’s almost of their own accord.

“What you said to the Allfather,” said Thor, frowning a little now and looking away, examining the long fingers wrapped around his own. “About not forgetting the war that brought you here.” He looked back at Loki, and his eyes narrowed shrewdly. “You meant me to bring you home, though you never meant me to know it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Loki, but now it was his turn to look away.

“There will be punishment for your actions on Midgard,” said Thor. “But brother, know that I am with you, and that you will never have to go so far again.”

“My brother,” said Loki, drawing Thor down to him again. “It’s true, isn’t it? After all of this, to you we are still brothers.”

“To you also, I think, though you continue to pretend otherwise,” said Thor, lying so that he half covered Loki, half embraced him. He pressed his mouth against Loki’s shoulder.

“I never doubt your honourable intentions, Thor,” said Loki. “But you did not go to Midgard to save its inhabitants from me.” He held Thor’s gaze, keeping himself as open and innocent as he knew how. “You went there to rescue me, like some maiden in need of your aid.” Loki intended to needle. “You meant to appeal to my sentiments and persuade me to return to the lie.”

But Thor would not be roused. “Tell yourself what you will,” he said, sleepily. “But I know that when you were under me, you felt the truth. And I will tell you again as often as you like,” he added, a gleam in his eye.

“The truth,” scoffed Loki. “There is no truth, Thor. Just a vast universe and whatever we make of it.”

At that, Thor took Loki’s face in his hand and forced him to look straight at him. “You are a god,” he said, all levity gone. “You were betrayed and hurt and you wielded immense power. And even with all that power and all that pain, you wanted to come home, to me. That is the truth.”

Loki would have objected, would have told Thor he was a fool, that he drew these fictions around himself like a balm, refusing to acknowledge the terrifying madness of the raw universe. But he could not, because his heart stuttered, and in that moment it seemed to him that in this endless cycle of eternity, in the birth and death and rebirth of the World Tree, in the vastness of the Nine Realms, nothing mattered, nothing at all, except that when he fell—and oh, he would fall again—Thor would always be there to find him.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little post-Avengers fic playing with the idea that Loki lacked "conviction" because the entire plan, all of it, was a way to allow him to escape the Other and return to Asgard. Inspired by conversations with Rivier, who will probably do a much better job of it, but there we go. :)


End file.
